Notam and BEK will arrange a series of workshops intended for advanced users, from 2017 to 2019. The workshops will be technical in nature, and the participants are therefore required to possess basic skills in programming, especially in Max, and signal processing. The workshops will be held in English, and will be arranged alternately in Oslo and Bergen. There is a limited amount of seats and highly qualified participants will therefore be prioritized.

Curtis Roads: Microsound and composition of electronic music

Curtis Roads is a pioneer in the field of microsound, a specialist in granular synthesis, a composer, author and programmer. He is a professor of media arts and technology at the university of California, Santa Barbara. The workshop will contain a mix of lectures and practical work in the studio. A more detailed program will be available soon. Roads will also perform a concert on the evening of December 12th, in cooperation with Ny Musikk.

Background on the workshop series

Notam and BEK are centers for innovation and use of technology in music and the arts in Norway. We have a wide international network which includes leading figures within music technology, sound design and audiovisual technology. Both Notam and BEK have education as a core focus, and strive to establish new goals and provide new impulses for current music technologists and artists. The series of workshops will progress with subjects such as Ambisonics, wave-field synthesis, advanced microphone techniques, headphones and immersive sound, Jitter, Gen, HISS tools, Gen and Owl, machine learning and filter design.

About IRCAM Spat

“Spat is a real-time spatial audio processor that allows composers, sound artists, performers, and sound engineers to control the localization of sound sources in 3D auditory spaces. In addition, Spat provides a powerful reverberation engine that can be applied to real and virtual auditory spaces. The processor receives sounds from instrumental or synthetic sources, adds spatialization effects in real-time, and outputs signals for reproduction on an electroacoustic system (loudspeakers or headphones). Its modular signal processing architecture and design are guided by computational efficiency and configurability considerations. This allows, in particular, straightforward adaptation to various multichannel output formats and reproduction setups, over loudspeakers or headphones, while the control interface provides direct access to perceptually relevant parameters for specifying distance and reverberation effects, irrespective of the chosen reproduction format. Another original feature of Spat is its room effect control interface relying on perceptive criteria. This allows the user to intuitively specify the characteristics of a specific room without having to use an acoustic or architectural vocabulary.”Text found at forumnet.ircam, read more here.

About microsound

“Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds. Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages.”Text found at mitpress.mit.edu, read more here.
The workshop series is supported by Norwegian Culture Council.

Illustrations downloaded from http://forumnet.ircam.fr/product/spat-en/ and https//:www.kvraudio.com_product_ircam-spat-by-flux